RIP

[y66]

From Amy Klobuchar's tribute to Fritz Mondale:

 

On Monday night we lost my friend and mentor Walter Mondale, known to friends as Fritz. In my home state of Minnesota we were proud to call Fritz our attorney general, our senator and our vice president.

 

On the national stage he shined as a young state attorney general who championed the right to counsel. As a senator he was a leader in the fight for civil rights and housing legislation and — way ahead of his time — warned of the need for intelligence oversight and privacy protections. He reshaped the vice presidency and served as a true partner to President Jimmy Carter, someone who wasn’t just a figurehead but instead a close adviser and confidant, deserving of a place in “the room where it happens.”

 

In our state we were lucky enough to see a different side of Fritz as well. He was the husband and father who lovingly took care of his wife, Joan, and daughter, Eleanor, through heartbreaking illnesses. He was a model for anyone who wonders what life would be like if the job ends, or life takes a bad turn.

 

It was not just the decency he displayed on the local and national political stage that made him stand out. It was the dignity he brought home with him in the wake of defeat. He didn’t crawl under a desk or complain about his losses.

 

Instead, with his characteristic humbleness and good humor, the man who had played a pivotal role in the Camp David peace accords between Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt would happily talk Mideast peace with a cashier at the grocery store. He’d share stories from his time as ambassador to Japan with students at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. And most important, he took on the mission of preparing the next generation of leaders for the next big decision by serving as a mentor so many. And I know that when the jury verdict in the trial of George Floyd’s murder was read, Fritz Mondale was with us rooting for justice.

 

My first job in politics was as a college intern in Vice President Mondale’s office in 1980 during his last year in office. I went to Washington with grandiose visions of writing big briefings on big issues. Instead I was assigned to furniture inventory, which meant I had to write down the serial numbers of every lamp, table and chair provided by the government for the use of the vice president and his staff.

 

As I like to remind students, I learned two things from that job: One, Walter Mondale was scrupulously honest. Nothing was missing. Second, take your jobs seriously, even when they aren’t exactly what you planned. Thanks to him, that was my first job in Washington. And, again thanks to him, senator was my second.

 

It was Walter Mondale who encouraged me to run for Senate, which included his insistence that I get my reasons for running down to a 30-second elevator speech. “That’s today’s politics,” he explained.

 

This resulted in a series of phone calls, with me earnestly reciting my 30 seconds and him responding with his typical Norwegian understatement: “That’s just not good enough. Call me back in an hour.” This went on for most of a day until I could finally recite those 30 seconds of reasons, eventually taking them to the cornfields of southern Minnesota, the iron ore mines in the north, and ultimately, the halls of the Capitol.

 

He did that for so many because politics was never just about him. When he picked Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate during his bid for the presidency in 1984, he assured me, and so many other young women, not to mention countless little boys and girls around the world who watched that day, that anything and everything was possible.

 

I still remember what Ms. Ferraro was wearing that day — the red dress, the string of pearls, the confidence. And I remember how proud he was to stand by her side. In fact, it was my experience with Vice President Mondale that encouraged me to believe that someday I, too, could actually run for office.

 

On the wall in the Carter Museum in Atlanta are Vice President Mondale’s words uttered shortly after their 1980 defeat, summing up their four years in office: “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.” I wrote those words down once on a piece of paper at the museum and slipped them in my purse. Through the Trump years, those words were my touchstone.

 

We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace. That is the minimum we should expect from our public servants. With Walter Mondale, we got that and so much more.

 

He was a small-town boy, the son of a minister who rose to the second-highest office in the land, with a strong moral core that defined his every action. He set a high bar for himself, and for his entire life he kept passing it and raising it, passing it and raising it.

 

As our country’s political winds have whipped back and forth in every direction over the past decades, Walter Mondale remained true to his North Star compass of goodness and decency. I can’t think of a better role model.

[sfi]

Once upon a time was a backbeat

Once upon a time all the chords came to life

And the angels had guitars even before they had wings

If you hold onto a chorus you can get through the night

 

Farewell Jim Steinman.

[Cyberyeti]

A load of women in the UK a little older than me will be crying into their tartan

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56848233

[y66]

Ole Anthony, Scourge of Televangelists

 

Ole Anthony, a former Air Force intelligence specialist and Texas political operative who found Jesus in 1972, built a following among the down-and-out of east Dallas, and then used that movement to take down a rogue’s gallery of unscrupulous televangelists and faith healers, died on April 16 at a house in Dallas that he shared with several members of his organization, the Trinity Foundation. He was 82.

[kenberg]

Ole Anthony, Scourge of Televangelists

 

 

 

 

 

Ah yes. A fellow octogenarian with Norwegian genes, born a few months before me and a few miles away. We have to stick together.

It's a very interesting story. Well, interesting to me.

[helene_t]

Anti-poacing activist Rory Young, and two journalists making a documentary about poaching, killed by terrorists in Burkina Faso.

https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-citizen-murdered-in-burkina-faso-working-in-anti-poaching-5421600-Apr2021/

[y66]

David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing

 

Mr. Swensen’s innovation at Yale was to shift endowment investing from a formulaic menu of stocks and bonds to a portfolio that included hedge funds and even timberlands. When he took over at Yale in 1985, the endowment was worth $1.3 billion. Since then it has grown to $31.2 billion, passing those at both Princeton and the University of Texas and trailing only Harvard University’s.

 

Mr. Swensen was particularly proud of how the growing endowment had helped the university contribute to financial aid.

 

“One of the things that I care most deeply about is that notion that anyone who qualifies for admission can afford to go to Yale, and financial aid is a huge part of what the endowment does,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2014.

Mr. Swensen was as concerned about the small investor as he was about his endowment. In his book “Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment” (1995), he advised people to keep their costs low and to stick to exchange-traded funds, which invest across an entire index of stocks, rather than investing with money managers or mutual funds that select individual stocks, and where the costs can erode profits. It was virtually impossible for the average investor to get into the best private funds, he said.

Swensen embodied the Yale motto “lux et veritas”.

 

He was a constant source of light and truth in the investment world. His vision, discipline, and dedication transformed the resources available to Yale and serve as a constant inspiration to me and many others that manage endowed funds.

 

There have been other great investors, but few who have combined brilliance and purpose more than David Swensen.

[barmar]

David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing

It was virtually impossible for the average investor to get into the best private funds, he said.

I've been working with financial advisor for about 30 years. Unless he's been lying to me, I've been slightly beating the S&P 500 but with a little less risk. Almost all of my investments have been in mutual funds. Our fund selection has been guided by the "efficient frontier" theory.

 

But maybe I'm not an "average investor". I have no family to support, and a relatively inexpensive lifestyle, so I've been able to invest most of my income pretty aggressively the whole time.

[sfi]

But maybe I'm not an "average investor".

I'm not sure that "average investor" and "financial advisor" belong together.

[barmar]

I'm not sure that "average investor" and "financial advisor" belong together.

One of the quotes said "rather than investing with money managers", so he did envisage ordinary investors making use of their services.

[pilowsky]

As Woody Allen said: "An investment advisor invests your money until it's all gone".

[y66]

Geoff Crowther

 

Mr. Crowther in Australia. He was, a colleague said, “a charming rogue, with a fearsome appetite for life that sometimes challenged those caught up in his wake.”Credit...Hyung Poon Crowther

[y66]

Carol Jarecki

[mycroft]

Peace to someone I should have known of, and might want to emulate.

 

But the last paragraph of that article, for a Canadian of a certain age (my edit):

 

Over the years, Ms. Jarecki’s daughters urged her to write her autobiography, but she never found the time. She did come up with a working title, however:

[Winstonm]

Donald Rumsfield passes into the known unknown, which to him may become known or knot. (sic)

[y66]

Gloria Richardson

 

[barmar]

Gloria Richardson

she found that what Black people most wanted was better housing, jobs and health care.

Sheesh. Lincoln freed them from slavery, wasn't that enough?

[y66]

Steven Weinberg

 

Dr. Steven Weinberg at the University of Texas at Austin. Though he had the respect, almost awe, of his colleagues for his scientific abilities, he also possessed a rare ability among scientists to communicate and explain abstruse scientific ideas to the public. Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

[y66]

Sally Miller Gearhart

Sally Miller Gearhart at a rally and street party in San Francisco in 1979. Credit...Daniel Nicoletta

 

Dr. Gearhart rose to prominence in the 1970s when she campaigned with Harvey Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor and the first openly gay politician elected in California, against Proposition 6, a ballot measure that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from public schools.

 

In 1978, on television, Dr. Gearhart and Mr. Milk debated the measure’s main backer, State Senator John Briggs, who said at one point, “We cannot prevent child molestation, so let’s cut our odds down and take out the homosexual group and keep in the heterosexual group.”

 

Dr. Gearhart responded: “Why take out the homosexual group when it is more than overwhelmingly true that it is the heterosexual men, I might add, that are the child molesters?”

 

She refused to back down and cited data on the topic, staring straight into the camera as if daring viewers to disagree with her.

 

In large part because of Dr. Gearhart and Mr. Milk’s efforts, the proposition did not pass in the November election that year. Less than three weeks later, Mr. Milk and Mayor George Moscone of San Francisco were fatally shot in City Hall by a conservative former city supervisor.

 

...

 

Sally Miller Gearhart was born April 15, 1931, in the Appalachian town of Pearisburg, Va., and raised in a conservative Protestant family. Her father, Kyle Montague Gearhart, was a dentist; her mother, Sarah (Miller) Gearhart, was a secretary.

 

“Mine was the childhood of the penny postcard and the ten-cent movie,” Dr. Gearhart wrote in an autobiographical sketch on her website, adding, “We were salt-of-the-earth people, believing in the Threefold God and in the everlasting virtues of hard work, a clean house, and strong drink.”

 

Her parents divorced when Sally was young, and she spent much of her childhood with her maternal grandmother, who ran a women’s boardinghouse. It was her first taste of a female-only community and one that stuck with her throughout her life.

 

...

 

Despite her forceful views, she was a figure of some contradiction — and openness. Ms. Craig, the filmmaker, described Dr. Gearhart this way:

 

“A lesbian feminist tree hugger who lived in a rustic cabin in the woods but ate only Pepsi and junk food.

 

“A disrupter who rejected the church and the ‘patriarchy,’ but knew the Bible through and through, had many close men friends and admirers, and enjoyed the company of conservatives so she could explore what made them tick.”

[sfi]

Nanci Griffith, one of Texas' finest singers and songwriters, passed away today aged 68.

 

And when she dies

She says she'll catch some blackbird's wing

Then she will fly away to heaven

Come some sweet, blue bonnet spring

[y66]

Barry the owl

[sfi]

Sean Lock

 

Enjoy him playing Carrot in a Box:

 

[y66]

Don Everly

 

The most successful rock ’n’ roll act to emerge from Nashville in the 1950s, Mr. Everly and his brother, Phil, who died in 2014, once rivaled Elvis Presley and Pat Boone for airplay, placing an average of one single in the pop Top 10 every four months from 1957 to 1961.

 

On the strength of ardent two-minute teenage dramas like “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Cathy’s Clown,” the duo all but single-handedly redefined what, stylistically and thematically, qualified as commercially viable music for the Nashville of their day. In the process they influenced generations of hitmakers, from British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Hollies to the folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel and the Southern California country-rock band the Eagles.

 

In 1975 Linda Ronstadt had a Top 10 pop single with a declamatory version of the Everlys’ 1960 hit “When Will I Be Loved.” Alternative-country forebears like Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris were likewise among the scores of popular musicians inspired by the duo’s enthralling mix of country and rhythm and blues.

 

Paul Simon, in an email interview with The Times the morning after Phil Everly’s death, wrote: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock 'n' roll.”

[barmar]

Paul Simon, in an email interview with The Times the morning after Phil Everly’s death, wrote: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful.

The Everlys may have been groundbreaking, but Simon is being too modest -- IMHO Simon and Garfunkle had a much better sound.

 

But they were of different times so it might not be fair to compare them.

[Winstonm]

Charlie Watts - drummer for The Rolling Stones